Education boost

Curriculum for Excellence is the greatest, most significant improvement to school education in a generation. Uniquely for the UK, it has been a decade in the making, has cross-party support and was designed through extensive collaboration with those who know best – teachers themselves. By building the curriculum around each pupil, we are enhancing their individual skills.

Mr Massie’s view of failing schools and underachieving pupils is one few of us involved in Scottish education would recognise. School attainment is rising – with year-on-year increases in exam results, and a new high pass rate for Highers and Advanced Highers. Official figures show that, in 2010-11, over 27 per cent of school-leavers left with at least five Highers or better.

We have surpassed our own targets for building new schools and, working with our local authorities, have exceeded the agreed target number of teachers in our schools. Scotland now has the lowest level of teacher unemployment in the UK.

When Mr Massie, in his enthusiasm for the English academies – a system based on privatisation, competition and deregulation – writes that Scottish schools lack independence, he is again mistaken. Since 2007, this government has reviewed how school budgets are managed, improved local accountability and given more power to schools.

Increasingly, global educationalists and commentators are looking to what we are doing. Recently, Northern Ireland’s education minister, John O’Dowd, spoke warmly of the “notable progress” we in Scotland have made in improving our already strong education system. Clearly, he believed that there is something to be learned from Scottish education.

Michael Russell

Cabinet secretary for  education and life long  learning